


A Certain Turn of Phrase

by Nabielka



Category: Whyborne and Griffin - Jordan L. Hawk
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21846016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: Not everything in Aklo is as sinister as the Arcanorum.
Relationships: Griffin Flaherty/Percival Whyborne
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Certain Turn of Phrase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkSplatterM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSplatterM/gifts).



With a certain other text intended for translation, I had made it previously up those same museum steps. Then I had done so with a certain amount of apprehension, for while I had a meeting arranged with the director, I knew a little of the man I was really intending to consult, and that put me on my guard. Twelve languages, the son of a railroad magnate – that all would have been bad enough, and indeed it amounted to a figure of a man who even after all these years away from Fallow made me a little nervous, but I had seen him, hurrying from the omnibus to the entrance, his hair more unruly than could be blamed on the wind, a stack of old books cradled to his arm, and something about the image had struck me to the heart.

This time I had gone to meet my lover. Under other circumstances I might have turned to other leads and pursued this one only once we had both made it home. The consulting I did with him at the museum tended to be of the pleasurable nature, though I always had a pretext ready. This time, alas, I had no other leads with which to persuade myself from the task, and rather more cause to be concerned. 

The case had at first seemed commonplace, the sort of thing that in isolation a client of greater activity would not even have brought to me. Mr Cargill, though seeming of a somewhat nervous disposition, reported that he too had at first ignored the correspondence, only becoming concerned when it increased in both frequency and bulk. It was the contents which had garnered my attention, though I could little understand them. 

There were nights when I could not get back to sleep. While the post-coital haze was usually sufficient to get me there in the first place, I was hardly ill-mannered enough to wake Whyborne on purpose, when I was thankful enough for his attentions on the nights of those dreadful fits. On some such nights, I had found myself flicking through his books, listless as only one without comprehension could, and I had developed some recognition of more than just the European languages I had been exposed to in Chicago.

Unfortunately, poor Mr Cargill’s correspondence rather reminded me of that book that in its own right sped sleep from my eyes, the Arcanorum, sorcerer’s guide. Little comfort that its tricks had saved our lives, when they would more times have been our deaths, had been Glenn’s in Chicago. It was the tool of men like the Brotherhood members, twisting reality on itself, and I feared what it could do to my Ival. 

The nature of my visit thus clouding my typical joy at seeing him, I prepared for a return of our usual disagreement as to the Arcanorum and his sorcery in the general. It was with some surprise, then, I heard him laugh. The coffee Miss Parkhurst had made was still a little too hot to drink comfortably. Normally the translations took longer, and gave rise to a rather different response. 

“Not the work of a practised hand,” he said, in response to my look. “The adjectival agreement’s scrambled up something dreadful, and _that’s_ certainly not the verb to use. The author knows his Greek and is relying upon it too much.” 

I leaned forward in my chair, as though to see it closer would provide me with any greater understanding. I knew little of his work. I found pleasure in listening to him explain it, for in that context he forgot entirely to be self-conscious, and the passion he displayed was such that I usually only saw turned upon me in bed. That did not make me always appreciative of the nuances, not on the occasion upon which they were proffered to me. 

“Isn’t that worse, if whoever is responsible lacks the skill to control whatever they mean to conjure up?” I realised as I spoke that I was using an argument I had heard him use in defence of studying the Arcanorum and scowled. “Whatever mischief they intend, surely it can only be more dangerous?” 

He was still smiling as he laid it aside. “You wanted the Brotherhood to be planning some birthday party in an ancient style. It’s really the same as that. I wrote compositions in much the same way my first year at Miskatonic, although they were rather better than this one.” The smile turned wry. “You said your client moved in a few months ago. It shouldn’t be difficult to find a forwarding address. It seems like some youth trying to demonstrate what he’s learning. Or she is, I suppose. Don’t tell Christine.”

There were times when to see him smile brought forth a similar response on my own face. On this occasion, I could scarce match it. Neither could I have hopes of it. Did I love his passion for learning, his conviction that everything could be understood along some scientific method, that the horrors could be put away? At times I despaired of it. 

“If whoever this is is learning Aklo –” I began, already seeing in my mind Blackbyrne’s creatures, hearing the faint echo of the chanting on the lake. 

“I learned Aklo!”

“You’re a sorcerer,” I pointed out, since we were already on familiar tracks. 

He denied it, with a response I had grown accustomed to, as though I had not seen him do things I would never have believed possible in Chicago. 

I thought the world of him. It made for no comfort. 

“Besides,” said Whyborne, with that pinched look he tended to adopt in an argument, “I learned it at Miskatonic. Any student hoping to become a comparative philologist might take the course. Or a medievalist, for that matter. There’s really no way around it if one is to study anything relating to medieval cults, which is bound to arise with any serious study. These kinds of sources don’t tend to published translations to aid the dilettante.”

Being ill-equipped to discuss the field in question, I took another sip of coffee. “You’re so convinced it can only be innocent?”

His gaze flickered down, then back to meet mine. “Without knowing the correspondents, I don’t suppose we can know if they mean anything else by their words. But certainly it’s no cipher and the words themselves are innocuous enough, no different than you’d find in the exercises of any primer.” 

Despite myself, I stiffened. He was too kind-hearted to dismiss me for my own more limited learning, but he laughed about the sensational adventure fiction I tended to and it was not possible to forget where he came from. Having estranged himself from his father, he could nevertheless no more cut himself off from his educated childhood than he could have cut himself from the Whyborne bloodline. He took pride in his work in a way I sometimes wished he could apply to himself as a whole, and which I could hardly want to discourage, but sometimes he did it in such a way I could not help but be reminded of the chasm between us, bridged so frailly and for so short a time.

Among the qualities to be admired in him, however, was not an observant predisposition, but that too was unfair; I had learned to mask myself well in Chicago. Steered away from the dangerous waters of the discussion we could not adequately lay to rest and onto the safer and more immediate concerns of the case, his voice had turned to amusement. “Griffin, Widdershins might be making you too suspicious. Just because we found one cult...” 

I let myself be reassured, or at least distracted. His philological assessment I trusted beyond question, with the same reliance I laid upon his courage and, less positively, his overly rosy view of how society functioned. Certainly there was much to Widdershins was worthy of a second glance, much to make a man wonder at the dealings of his fellow men, even one who was not in the business of other men’s business as I was. 

This too was a familiar topic, if a less fraught one. As always, it took us energetically through our coffee, with the usual warm-hearted joy at discussing such things so easily with a lover. It was an experience I hadn’t had since Elliot – indeed, at such times I was prone to wondering whether I had ever had anything like this with Elliot. Certainly Elliot would never have devoted himself with such determination to arguing that _Blood on the Altar_ was a perfectly normal carol that had likewise been sung at Arkham, nor could I conceive that I could have found such comfort in hearing him declaim such things or felt so at ease disagreeing with him.


End file.
